My Approach to Research

These are some of my research principles, which should give a sense of what it’s like to work with me!

Proactive stakeholder engagement — research as a team sport

Research is only as good as the decisions it informs. As I’m kicking off research, I always collaborate with my stakeholders to ensures our research questions are maximally actionable and urgent. This builds trust across in research and ties research directly to business outcomes.

As a study progresses, I will share out initial insights and invite stakeholders to sit-in on research sessions. Hearing user perspectives directly is often a rarity outside of research, so it can build additional empathy. Sharing preliminary insights, as a practice, communicates the trajectory of the findings, if not the final recommendations. This avoids any surprises post-analysis, and is especially helpful when a stakeholder decision is imminent. Together, these practices and others engender stakeholder investment and buy-in, which continues to benefit the data-driven decisions informed by my research.

Deep toolbox of methods (but not afraid to mix and match)

I am trained and have industry experience with interviews, surveys, workshop facilitation, field studies and contextual inquiry, card sorting, usability testing, and more. More importantly, I am comfortable combining aspects of different methods to fit the needs of a given study. For example, this project wasn’t just user interviews — it also contained interviews with partners who acted as a proxy for a much larger sample size.

I’m glad I learned the textbook way of doing UX Research, but the real world often demands creativity in research and analysis. In grad school, I used journey maps to compare and contrast interviewees’ experiences with mental health resources — this tool, which is usually an output of research, was invaluable in surfacing similarities in out participants’ experiences.

Sharing out findings? I’m flexible.

I’m comfortable giving presentations, writing research reports, and everything in between. I’m trained in a plethora of research artifacts/storytelling methods, including personas, empathy maps, and storyboards — and I can even whip up a Figma prototype if needed.

To bring proactive stakeholder engagement into play, I am experienced in multiple types of presentations. Knowing the audience informs the type of presentation given. I love making presentations interactive when possible, and including discussion prompts is a great way to do this. When presenting to senior leadership, however, concise presentations are needed.